Track links that use redirects

Adobe Analytics can track where users came from and where they exited from links on your site. These reports are respectively populated in the referrer/referring domains reports and exit links report.

Handle incoming referrers (traffic sources)

Adobe uses the document.referrer property to populate the referrer and referring domains reports.

Server-side redirects generally do not alter the referrer value. Link shortening services almost always use server-side redirects, so shortened links contain the true referrer, not the link shortener. For example, if you were on adobe.com and clicked a bit.ly link that led to example.com, adobe.com would still be listed as a referrer. The bit.ly domain would not be listed in any reports.

Client-side redirects on the other hand do overwrite referring values. Client-side redirects usually consist of a meta tag somewhere in the HTML such as the following:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='http://example.com/'" />

Commonly these redirects display a page that says "You will be redirected in X seconds", however is not required. If client-side redirects populate reports with undesired values, you can override what is sent to Adobe Analytics by setting the s.referrer variable on the landing page.

If you believe that a referring value is incorrectly populating reports, go to that URL in question and follow the link to your site. Once the page loads, open the debugger and check the 'Referring URL' parameter. This value is what is used in traffic sources reports.

Handle outgoing referrers (exit links)

If you are using automatic link tracking, links hosted on your site that visitors click are tracked to the exact location stated within the <a> tag. For example, you have a shortened bit.ly link on your site that leads to example.com. Clicking the link populates analytics reports with bit.ly as the exit link, not example.com. Because an image request is sent immediately upon clicking the link. Adobe Analytics takes the link content at face value without regards to the final destination.

The exit link value can be specified if using manual link tracking. The third parameter in an s.tl() image request indicates the exact value the report is populated with.